Bid for Mars club: India sends mission to Red Planet

This television frame grab taken from Indian television channel NDTV, broadcasting live footage from state television Doordarshan, shows the PSLV-C25 launch vehicle carrying the Mars Orbiter probe as its payload moments after lift-off in Sriharikota on November 5, 2013 (AFP Photo / NDTV) / AFP

India has launched a rocket carrying a satellite towards Mars, a first interplanetary space mission for the Asian country. The spacecraft is expected to reach the Red Planet by September next year.

The Mars Orbiter Mission blasted off the Satish Dhawan Space
Center on Sriharikota Island. If successful, the mission gives
India a place among the US, Europe and Russia, which have managed
to orbit or land on Mars in the past. China tried a similar
mission in 2011, but its Yinghuo-1 probe failed to leave Earth’s
orbit.

"This is our modest beginning for our interplanetary
mission," said Deviprasad Karnik, spokesman for the state-run
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

The $73-million probe carries five instruments which will allow
it to study the Martian atmosphere and map its surface, as well
as the planet’s two moons Phobos and Deimos. The cost of the
satellite however is quite small relative to other similar
missions. The primary goal of the launch is to showcase rocket
technology India has developed, rather than to study Mars.

India launched its space program 50 years ago. It received a
boost after 1974, when Western powers imposed sanctions against
India over its first nuclear test, and the country had to rely on
domestic engineering to develop rocket technology.

One of India’s greatest space successes so far is the launch of
Chandrayaan moon probe in 2008, which found strong evidence of
presence of water on Earth’s satellite.